Alrighty, here’s my setup I’m hoping to improve slightly.
Fulton 2-1/2" x 20’ Ultra Flex Clear-Vue Heavy Duty PVC Hose
Ridgid 45L NXT Shopvac
Dustopper
I’d like to use the Fulton flex wherever I can instead of the shopvac hose, since I can cut it to length. Beyond that I’d like to use some sort of pipe for the straight run from the floor under the CNC, to the ceiling, and then the flex hose hangs down.
Home Depot sells 2" or 3" PVC pipes. I’m obviously keen on keeping the full 2.5" diameter to keep the flow rates up and reduce restrictions. Has anyone come across any adapters or setups I can copy? I tried checking Thiniverse for 3D printed adapters but their search is poor and it’s a couple dozen pages of search results. Obviously the final step would be just designing all my own in CAD, but I am figuring this MUST have been done ad-nauseum
Pvc has straight wall and reduces turblance and increases dust collection. I bought a meter to test air speed. I measures right at dc and at Shapeoko and has a 50 percent loss with spiral dc hose. So if possible metal or pvc works much better if you can accomadate the piping in your shop. Be sure you run a continuous ground down pvc to reduce static. Pvc and moving air will create static. Use sheet metal screws just long enough to pierce pvc so you don’t create choke points to catch chips.
There’s the gate valve which is set up to be parameterised for the size of the pipe, I made the pipe holes slightly tapered to ensure a tight fit and put the M4 bolts in to provide some locking. They print in two housing halves plus the gate, the housing halves are flat faced so they don’t need any supports for printing, the gate has a little bit of support under the spring tabs.
The spiral hose adapters are also somewhat parameterised, I suggest the outer adapter as that doesn’t reduce the internal diameter as much, the internal one I use to stop down to a much smaller pipe for use on my track saw or sanders.
I had to iterate a couple of times on the fitting diameter for the pipes, I think over here we have a metric wall thickness on the 2 inch pipe or something similarly confused and British. In the end I just took a caliper to the pipe I had and set that as the mid-point of the taper.
Not exactly your design but copied/inspired from it. I decided to do ID since it’s barely anything and the shopvac has more vacuum then flow anyways. Probably not losing a huge amount.
to the mix and match of ID/OD measurements used in the conduit/pipe/tubing world.
That looks amazing! Would love those files.